Building Awareness & Audience Through the Power of Content Marketing

How does your message rise above the clutter?

To be top-of-mind with potential clients, you must position yourself as a thought leader on today’s real estate market. This means that you should be a provider of resources and information regarding trending topics impacting the industry.

Creating content is an effective marketing tool for your company if you can consistently provide your audience with valuable information that answers popular questions or assists with task-oriented needs ¹. Whether you are at the forefront of state building laws or industry design trends, think about what information your target audience needs help getting their hands on.

Next consider what format would best suit the type of information you are trying to communicate. There are a variety of content types to choose from however crafting short videos or writing articles/blogs are two great ways to engage your audience. Most often, these formats require the least amount of resources to create and are easily shared.

Blogging is beneficial because it helps build a reputable content library for your company’s website that can assist with your efforts in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ². The blogs that you write can also be repurposed into articles that can be published on partner websites (more to come on that).

Video is another powerful format that is fast becoming the preferred method of content consumption. According to a study from Cisco, video will represent approximately 82% of all internet traffic by 2020 ³. Most importantly, video is being used as a research tool that can lead to business growth. According to this recent study, 65% of executives are found to visit a company’s website after watching video. The study suggests that 39% of these executives will follow-up with a phone call to a company because of video ⁴.

Once you decide on what content to create, it is helpful to build out a calendar for the year so that you or your marketing team can maintain consistency with pushing out fresh, valuable content. If your internal resources are sparse, you can find partners who will assist you in content creation. This can save you time and help you produce articles or video that will have the greatest impact.

You should next consider how you might share your content so that it reaches the biggest audience. Partnering with established and trusted media brands, oftentimes referred to as “premium publishers”, is one way to maximize the number of people seeing your message. MediaPost reports that approximately 41% of consumers are getting more news coverage today than they were just a couple of years ago because they are interested in what is going on within their communities ⁵. Consumers turn to premium publishers because they generally feel that their time spent on these sites is productive ⁶.

Overtime, businesses may find that a partnership with a premium publisher can translate into an increase in interactions with their brand because consumers are influenced by the “Halo Effect”. The trust and positive impressions a consumer may feel about the publisher and its content can extend to all those associated with it. But what could a partnership look like?

Most premium publishers have the means to distribute your content directly on their website.
You might consider re-purposing your blog posts for content marketing opportunities that take on the same look and feel of standard news stories on the site. Often, a publisher will have their team write content or edit provided content so that it blends in seamlessly with other stories on the site.

Or, if you like the idea of creating and sharing a video, there are often a variety of solutions offered by premium publishers. Videos may be found on article pages and immersed within the publisher’s content throughout the site. Should you not have the capability of producing a video, inquire about production services. Select publishers have dedicated teams to help you fill this need.

As with any other business plan, to be successful with content marketing, you need a long-term strategy and consistent visibility to build a loyal audience. The reward for your efforts may mean finding an audience who will turn to you first for their future real estate needs.